The Talking Pen

[seven]

The Talking Pen says I Love You

and being a pen it has already drawn a hearth!

 

I believe it is possible to make stories fast with this character.

And using two pens - you can have a dialogue - making a plot by setting up a problem and giving some solution to it. Just that easy!

 

Making a melodrama - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melodrama -

with two pens or more and some props for some surroundings and perhaps you can do half an hour show in a fortnight earning some quids...

 

Here is the project file and everything you need for you to download and experiment with yourself!

 

Perhaps some day I will also do a free WINK tutorial - http://www.debugmode.com/wink/ -

on how to use the Talking Pen.

 

Perhaps you can manage it without having a tutorial?!.,

TalkingPenProject.zip

[seven]

And here is the result of The Talking Pens drawing and saying:

I Love You

TalkingPen_I_Love_You.mov

[seven]

And here is how it looks working with the Talking Pen.

PS

I hope you will get some inspiration doing something yourself with the Talking Pen.

[seven]

Here you can find a tutorial on how to use The Talking Pen.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=16426

 

 

I need a little help also - with animating the pens ink - a particle stream - hope someone can help - thanks in advance. See:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...ndpost&p=123893

[DarkLimit]

Hey seven this is cool stuff...... thanks for the tut.......

[seven]

Hey seven this is cool stuff...... thanks for the tut.......

Thanks for your nice comment!

 

Perhaps you can help me with the animation of the emission rate?

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...ndpost&p=123946

 

Or someone else perhaps can give me a clue!

 

 

I am just now rendering a new Talking Pen - a female one!

I believe you can do some animations - melodramas - fast and dirty by using one or more talking pens.

 

For the fireplace I have had a look on this topic:

http://www.mossor.org/Desktop/Tutorials/Sp...es/AnimChor.jpg

 

And I have used my tutorial on using Front Projection Maps:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=16007

 

 

Here is a screen capture from the rendering:

[seven]

Here is the new baked movie - just from the owen

with the female Talking Pen telling you:

Welcome, to my fireplace...

welcome_to_my_fireplace.mov

[DarkLimit]

My computer is pretty crappy so I can't play with particles, so I can't even experiment and help you....

 

But ur character is cool........ the simple design lends itself to some nice animation..

[seven]

But ur character is cool........ the simple design lends itself to some nice animation..

Thanks again for your nice comment...

Perhaps you have some ideas about rigging it... Now it has two bones... but they are a little hard to use... Perhaps it is possible to only let a bone rotatate between some limits - eg letting it rotate only between - 30 degrees and + 30 degrees so it will be easier to animate the pen...

[seven]

Here is a new one using layers instead of using a Front Projection Target for the fireplace.

Using layers instead of modeling is fast. I have written some tutorials on layers:

 

Alpha Channel and Layers

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=15993

Using Layers instead of Modeling

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=15998

An Animated Ball on a Layer

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=15999

Looping a Movie on a Layer

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=16001

 

Well I want to do half an hour of melodrama - http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/M/htmlM/...a/melodrama.htm

in a fortnight. I do not think it is possible with A:M. The program have to incorporate some changes first. But I do not think anyone is thinking in this direction yet?

 

MELODRAMA

 

One of television's most diverse program types, the melodramatic genre encompasses an extensive variety of aesthetic formats, settings, and character types. Melodramatic formats include the series, consisting of self-contained episodes, each with a classic dramatic structure of conflict/complication/resolution in which central and supporting characters return week after week; the serial, which features a continuing story line, carried forward from program to program (this is typical of soap opera, both daytime and prime-time); the anthology--a non-episodic program series constituting an omnibus of different self-contained programs, related only by sub-genre, and featuring different actors and characters each week (important examples include The Twilight Zone, a science fiction anthology, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a mystery anthology); and repertory, a non-episodic series consisting of different programs featuring a group of actors who appear each week, but in different roles (very rare on television, the repertory is best represented by The Richard Boone Show). Settings include the hostile western frontier of Gunsmoke and Have Gun, Will Travel and its urban analogue--the mean streets of East Side/West Side and, more recently, Hill Street Blues; the gleaming corporate office towers of Dallas and L.A. Law; the quiet suburban enclaves in which Marcus Welby, M.D. made house calls in the 1970s; the ostentatious exurban chateaus of Falcon Crest and the numerous wealthy criminals outsmarted by the proletarian cop Columbo; and the high-pressure, teeming workplace peopled by dedicated professionals such as the newspaper reporters in Lou Grant. The seemingly endless variety of "heroic" and "villianous" character types in television melodrama, whose weekly travails and romantic interests ground the dramaturgy, are drawn from the rich store of historical legend, the front pages of today's broadsheets and tabloids, and the future projections of science fiction and science fantasy: cowboys, sheriffs, bounty hunters, outlaws, pioneers/settlers, police, mobsters, sleuths, science fiction adventurers and other epic wanderers, spies, corrupt entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, and intrepid journalists.

 

Television melodrama has its direct roots in the early-nineteenth-century stage play in which romantic, sensational plots and incidents were mixed with songs and orchestral music. The word melodrama evolved from the Greek melos, meaning song or music, and drama, a deed, action, or play, especially tragedy. In tragedy the hero is isolated from society so that he or she may better understand his or her own and the society's moral weakness; but once enlightened, the hero cannot stave off the disaster embedded in the social structure beyond the hero's control.

 

Here is an image from the movie getting the taste:

[seven]

Well I hope on some hero telling the truth on what is going on just now...

 

To do half an hour of melodrama in a fortnight you have to be really fast?

No - I believe if the program is good on it..

Here you can find it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marionette

A marionette is a type of puppet moved by strings, as in a puppet show. They originated from the medieval times in France and can be found in every country in the world. They can be found in box theatres, curtain theatres and black light theatres. Marionettes are considered by many to be very entertaining for both adults and children.

 

Pinocchio is a particularly famous marionette.

 

In the 1960s TV producer Gerry Anderson and his colleagues pioneered a technique combining marionettes with electronic components, typically to control facial features, which they dubbed "supermarionation".

 

The musical The Sound of Music contains a fairly detailed scene involving several marionettes worked on a stage.

 

The word "marionette" comes from French, where it was a diminutive of "Marion", which was a diminutive of "Marie".

 

 

 

 

 

Well - children are playing with dolls - Barbie and Ken

switching clothes... and the clothes they can use on different dolls perhaps... It would be possible to do your own faces to the dolls... and those dolls - faces being lipsynced without having to do anything yourself...

 

And there would be a lot of Actions. Actions to tell the dolls to sit down in a chair... Just pointing at the chair and the doll would go there and sit down... and then telling the doll to take a book to read... and the doll would do that...

 

I do not believe it is impossible to implement such an program... but is anyone thinking of it... I do not think so... or perhaps the program is already here to use... Someone having something about this?

 

Here is the movie - 8 seconds - so there is some more seconds to go - before it will be half an hour... but here the beginning:

welcome_to_my_fireplace02.mov

[RViewer]

Sounds like a worthy project to devote yourself to Seven. I like that they posess both horns and a halo. Makes for dynamic characters which are capable of the full range of human expression. Cool idea, and the pen may prove to be more powerful than the sword.

[seven]

Sounds like a worthy project to devote yourself to Seven. I like that they posess both horns and a halo. Makes for dynamic characters which are capable of the full range of human expression. Cool idea, and the pen may prove to be more powerful than the sword.

Well I tried to do this ten years ago with 2D sprites and Director. It functioned and did not function. I do not believe it is a project for just one person - sorry to say...

 

In some way this is already possuble in most 3D-program - but I want it to be easier. Why can we not call a part of a body a hand and A:M will rig it for us?

 

And why can we not use a square defined as eg. a cushion and then tell a character to sit down on that square - and that character will do it in some way - being some kind of programmed Barbie/Kent character...

 

Most things doing an animation with human characters can be pre-programmed I believe - just telling your own story with them.

 

And why can we not have a group called lips and a group called tongue and A:M will do the lipsync - setting up the mouth forms automatically?

 

It can not be any difficult in programming that?

Well my idea is worth some quids??? - I give it away for free!!!

Because I have not seen any half an hours melodramas done with A:M in a forthnight yet... and I believe it is possible... to do it...

 

Because there is so many stories to tell - for all retireds and kids and everyone inbetween...

 

I like that they posess both horns and a halo. Makes for dynamic characters which are capable of the full range of human expression

 

Well I think it is also is good - people are not onesided - most of us are a mix of devils and saints - perhaps being a daint or an sevil?

 

And the real mix of the two - the black and white - the opposites are the grey - the single minded person - a person having going into the grey - the stillness - emptiness and having come back being both black and white relying on the greyness behind everything - being a mix of the opposites being bhite or wlack...

 

Cool idea, and the pen may prove to be more powerful than the sword.

 

I had a look for some pen fighter and found this one Googling a bit:

http://www.forusa.org/nonviolence/62dear.html

 

Nonviolence is the essence of truth; one cannot seek truth, Gandhi discovered, and still continue to participate in violence and injustice, within one's heart and in the world. Nonviolence is the power of the powerless, the power of God, the only power that overcomes evil, including the evil of the bomb. "Nonviolence is the greatest and most active force in the world.... One person who can express nonviolence in life exercises a force superior to all the forces of brutality.... Nonviolence cannot be preached. It has to be practiced," he insisted. "If we remain nonviolent, hatred will die as everything does, from disuse."

 

Because we can/will(more likely will) soon face something terrible - there are plans:

http://www.irmep.org/GBU.htm

 

And someones have been doing a build up for this - faking threats:

http://whatreallyhappened.com/9-11BasicQuestions

 

 

 

 

So the single-minded persons are really needed - I found this one perhaps kind of person having understood - experienced something and have been able to use the pen to tell it:

http://www.chrismaser.com/

 

A lot about both social and enviromental sustainability he has written. But also on gardening both our inner and or outer ones:

 

The World is in My Garden: A Journey of Consciousness 2005. White Cloud Press, Ashland, OR. 303 pp. (Senior author with Zane Maser.) UK edition by Polair Publishing, London. 2003.

 

"In a world awash in holistic self-help books this one stands out because of Chris Maser's pedigree as a world-renowned ecologist. …The general message of this book—we must change our relationship with the rest of the world in order to survive—is the most crucial problem facing our species."—Gary McFarland, BookPeople's Book of the Day.

 

And some sayings:

http://www.cygnus-books.co.uk/features/wor..._zane_maser.htm

 

 

When I walk through the gate of the high cedar fence surrounding my garden, I enter into a secluded place, a sanctuary of the soul, wherein worldly knowledge, incessant noise, frantic motion, aggrandized stimulation, and competitive ambition fall away.

 

Yet, as Thomas Moore explains in The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Living, time spent in a garden gets us nowhere. ‘A garden,’ he says, ‘entices us to slow down and stop,’ which, he adds, is an important dynamic of the soul, for anything of the soul requires time and a lowering of productivity and effort.

 

Gardening is thus a monk’s way of nurturing the soul, which Moore calls a ‘fruitful silence,' where movements of the soul are amplified. A life that honours solitude is a requisite for self-mastery, living with a sense of direction, and discovering the true song of one’s own soul.

 

Before you can experience the ‘lucid stillness,’ however, you must empty yourself. A university professor discovered this when inquiring about Zen from Nan-in, a Japanese Zen master. Nan-in served tea. He poured the professor's cup full and kept on pouring.

 

His visitor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself: ‘It is overfull. No more can go in without overflowing.’

 

Nan-in replied, ‘Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?’

 

As I mature in spirit, and the sorting continues, I find, as Thomas Merton wrote, that to be truly silent one must let go of the yearning for recognition and cease worrying about making the right impression. St John of the Cross adds, in a verse that has a Zen-like flavour:

 

In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything,

Desire to have pleasure in nothing.

In order to arrive at possessing everything,

Desire to possess nothing.

In order to arrive at being everything,

Desire to be nothing...

 

 

I do not agree and the talking pens will not agree too - I believe - but perhaps - there is something to learn from this pen fighter and his book:

 

The World Is In My Garden

Chris Maser with Zane Maser

 

Something for half an hour of melodrama - going a little outside the garden - too!

[seven]

Still I am having the problem with animating the emission rate of the pens ink.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...ndpost&p=123893

 

Someone willing to give a little help?

 

 

Perhaps this garden picture is better with a little less mono-culture... not that grass!!!

[seven]

And here is one with only mono culture - a virtual breed: